


Dark Star

by TronKon



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Abusive Relationship, Cutting, M/M, Physical Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 03:16:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TronKon/pseuds/TronKon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dying was not like Jason Todd had expected it to be. The rumors of cold and hot and agony and paradise were greatly exaggerated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Star

**I.**  
  
Dying was not like Jason Todd had expected it to be. The rumors of cold and hot and agony and paradise were greatly exaggerated.

He was in the manor.

He wasn't in the manor.

He walked in deep silence. The silence of snow falling, close and soft. The silence was not the absence of sound but rather the absorption of it. A scream was swallowed into nothing as easily as a footstep.

He was himself and he wasn't.   
  
He shook apart and reformed a thousand times a second, a day, a century.   
  
The manor was home, the manor was a prison, the manor was a coffin. It shook apart and came together a thousand and one times a week, a month, a _millennia_.

Jason Todd had always been this. He was old, he was new. There was time for nothing and time for everything.

There was _no_ time.

Life and living were the limitations of a linear clock, a preordained destiny. The destiny in question was working towards an absolute, perfect zero.

Jason was a flicker and a shake that existed a thousand years before he was born and a million years after he'd been a whisper on a dying man's breath.

And there was another.

Jason did not see it first. He heard and took notice where there was no sound and screaming all at once.

The sound was a thrum that oscillated deep in the bones he did not have buried in the chest he no longer possessed.

Then in between the twitches of matter forming and reforming around him he caught something that did not change.

Ink in water, black tendrils and wisps on the outermost edges of his consciousness.

It hadn't been there before but maybe it had. Yes, it had always been there. Or maybe it had only come to exist the moment Jason noticed it.

It touched the edges of Jason, of what he was now with curiosity, then retreated to wait. They were silent for a thousand years before Jason felt the flicker.

It was a twinge and a supine shudder of the world breaking, of Jason's world stopping and rearranging and it was a broken body and a listless gaze that was swallowed by the centuries.

_Bruce?_

Jason tried to speak but found he didn't have the means with which to do so.

A tendril coiled around him, squid ink in the ocean.

_Most burst apart. They do not come back together as you have._

Jason could imagine malice and apology and serenity in the voice he couldn't hear with ears he'd never had.

_Why am I different than those others?_ Jason doesn't understand. Or maybe he does.

_There is something left undone._

Jason twisted the ink around him more tightly.

He'd forgotten but now he remembered what he needed to do.

Jason Todd had never been an artist or a sculptor. That didn't matter. He knew with certainty there would be no mistakes.

He shaped the tendrils into lines, smooth and sharp points and a fall of black to frame a face.   
  
When he was done it was a boy. Small but sharp like a bird. The eyes were blue because they had to be.

_You'll stay with him._ Jason felt another thrum. Another oscillation. Assent.

_You will be clever. You will think like he does. Someone to understand him because he is alone. You will be a partner and an equal and ruthless and merciful in equal measure. You will be whatever is needed in whatever moment it is needed._

It was not good, this ink blot boy. It was not good nor evil, Divine nor sinister. Those distinctions did not exist.   
  
But life was more absolute. Jason knew evil could be something as small as a cut delivered with the intention to harm.

It cocked it's head, gaze rueful. _Temper me with weakness._ It suggested.

Jason thought but he already knew.

_Loyalty._

It thrummed again, this time the sound was a flutter like bird wings. It was satisfied.

_Name me._ It's voice was a thousand monarchs rising together from the trees to move north.

Jason felt a great swell, a breath being held and he let it out in one great gust of wind over a scorching desert.

_Timothy._

**II.**

Timothy Jackson Drake was born on a Wednesday afternoon in 1993.

He was born for just one reason.

**III.**

Jason Todd died burning, and woke screaming.

The noise after silence was worse somehow then bubble sugar skin searing and peeling but he couldn't remember why.

He wanted the silence of ice and cold and snow.

But there was something left undone.

_There was another._

**IV.**

Jason hates with the burning fury of a dying star. Sometimes Jason thinks the screaming never stopped, his screaming rumbles and vibrates his too small meat- _chest._

Tinged in Lazarus poison, nothing seems _sharp_ enough.

Jason is underwater and screaming and clawing and _the meat_ is in the way. Senses dulled by red moist beating and disgusting.

Jason is the slaughter but aches to be the knife.

He does not even know what it is he yearns to feel or be. Only that this is not it. This life of linear actions and reactions and slavery to time is not the truth. Jason thinks he may only know the truth if he sees it for himself.

There was truth once, and purpose. No too small meat but glorious purpose and _belonging_.

Jason thinks the fit will not feel too small if he regains what is his.

So he uses clumsy hands and tools to reshape the world in this new language that seems so important but feels so _indelicate._

He rewrites it in meat and blood.

But there is one in the way.

This blood spills cleaner somehow.

The replacement does not die.

**V.**

Jason _hates_. He hates blue eyes and pale sharp angles. The smile painted on a throat in red.

The replacement is a vessel for his hate. It allows and absorbs all Jason gives. It is velvet trapping light.

Sometimes Jason sees a glint of teeth that seem too sharp.

Jason is brutal and unforgiving but it is always quick and sharp and slithers away.

Jason forces it under the water and sees tendrils. Ink in water.

And then Jason thinks he should _know._

It's a sort of truth. But a half one at best.

**VI.**

"Haven't I done all you asked?"

The mouth that speaks is young but a cold shock that is old lances through Jason and for a moment he does not feel so small in his meat suit nor so alone in his mind. Jason's mouth knows how to work this though his mind is floundering.

"All I have asked." He replies and his words feel as old as the other. He pauses and breathes. He does not feel the Lazarus here. Touching and taking and shrinking him small.

"You are cruel, maker." It responds in kind. "Tempered with loyalty I cannot escape, you bite and howl and grasp. Instead of that which is easier. That which is right."

A knife flashing in the dark.

Jason feels as old as a star. "A knife."

"Your knife if you would wield me."

Jason pauses. "But you fought against me. You fight now."

A flash of sharp white between lips. "I am but a tool created to protect what is yours. _They_ are yours. I would not let the screaming madness of the void within you harm them."

It is good. Jason feels a rumble in his chest that is almost content.

When Timothy smiles, Jason thinks it is the Void smiling back.

**VII.**

They languish in their mortal forms and sometimes they forget. The truth dismissed to the back of their minds like mysticism. Stories for night time, but lies where light might be shed on them.

They fight battles against each other, and more and more frequently side by side. Where Jason is power and Tim is the subtle quickening, deciding the battle with his darting liquid movements, still ever the grace of ink in water.

Sometimes, less now, they remember. And then they are both older and wiser than their small clumsy forms can hold.

Jason fights down Void and Lazarus madness, tamps it down to a small poison slick in the back of his mind. As ever this is not nearly good enough and sometimes it comes over him, roaring anguish and agony and destroying and shredding the meat and mortar in his path.

It is at those times that His knife turns it's blade towards the hand that wields it, cutting and tearing out the Howling like blackened cancer.

And after there is always stillness.

Bruce and the others do not understand this. The stillness or the Howling before it. When the anger is on him, he and Tim fight like creatures possessed, creatures bent on the total annihilation of the other. After, they have a need to be close, and it is not uncommon for them to be spread across a floor in a den like children after a particularly vigorous day of play, bandaged and fed and lazy.

Sometimes they lay close enough for Jason to weave his fingers through the ink strand of Tim's hair and he thinks that for this, for these moments where humans touch and connect and feel, this meat is not so clumsy and wrong as it most often feels.

Sometimes when it is quiet enough he thinks he feels the oscillating air between them, and the thrum and flutter of bird wings.

But in a moment these thoughts are always reduced to ash and forgotten places.

The Howling always returns.

**VIII.**

Jason made Tim, out of the screaming howling blood of the Void. He thinks he remembers that well enough. Tim is of the Void but restrained to be useful. It is why Tim knows when to break Jason's hands when they reach for his throat.

Tim always senses the gaping maw of the Void rising in him, because they are the same.

 

And his eyes are sharp and hands quick as he splints each of Jason's fingers in turn, caring for his shell where Jason has no care for what happens to it either way.

Jason is not so fond of his meat as Tim seems to be. Truth be told he finds the shape of Tim more pleasing.

Tim always seems to sense what is needed and leans soft dark hair against Jason's cheek.

It is the stillness of _between_ that satisfys Jason in these times.

It is a small peace between them before another terrible war.

**IX.**

The Bats think Jason Lazarus-mad. They only abide his Howling because Tim's tongue is as subtle and sharp as the weapon he plays, and Tim always keeps the damage between them alone.

They think Jason Lazarus-mad but Jason is a treasured pet too loved to be euthanized, so his fits are borne in resignation and hope for quick passing.

It is not that they are wrong, Jason assents to the poisonous tickle on the edges of all he touches and sees. The green absinthe ever cloying on his tongue. It is just that Lazarus madness is an easy thing to push aside when Jason must wrestle with the Void within his meat. The Void is a supernova ever expanding, ever pushing against the universe and making-unmaking all in it's path. The void is bitter and ever hungry and ever a truth too maddening to understand for long.

So Jason plays at Lazarus madness. But it is never poison green that brings the howling rage upon him.

It is always the need to rip, to tear, to sunder this stinking meat and step outside of this prison.

It is Tim who always stays his weary hand.

**X.**

When it is upon him Jason thinks he does what is best for those he loves. They are trapped and alone inside these meat suits. His affection is what points his gun and squeezes the trigger. His love is what reaches to tear flesh and bone and pull out what is shining within them and let it join the twitching oscillating thrum of matter forming and reforming every second.

Jason stops when he remembers they do not know. When Tim reminds him that they do not understand.

In the stillness Jason wishes he too did not know of these things. Perhaps happiness would come to him then.

Tim calms these thoughts in the In between. Sharp clever fingers sliding through Jason's hair and touching soothing lines down his temples and throat.

This tenderness is even less understood by the Bats then the violence.

Jason does not explain these things. They are for he and his knife alone.

**XI.**

Maybe it was Tim that made Jason, Jason thinks sometimes.

When he mentions these thoughts, the Void within Tim is amused. Sharp white flashes between his lips and Jason is chided.

"Such a human thought to attempt to discover whom begot whom." It rumbles, old and kind and fierce and terrifying.

"It is the way this meat understands." Jason knows there are limits now that thoughts have to travel slow stinking pathways through sluggish primitive means.

"It is not the way of things." The Void rumbles back. "We have made each other. We are the same. I am you."

Jason thinks he understands for a moment.

But it is a _too_ _bright_ truth and soon it slips away.

**XII.**

Jason likes biting sharpness. A finely honed blade, perfect and quick. He thinks he had this finesse in things _before._ Now he is an unwieldy hatchet trying to core an apple. He destroys all he wishes to better. His sweep is a crashing bull in a china shop.

Still, sharp words have not eluded him and he lets them dance on his tongue, a soothing balm on his pride.

Tim does not bother with these sharp words, he does not need to for he is sharp himself. But Jason likes their inelegant cutting. The curses rolling off his tongue feel more controlled then his violence held back.

It keeps the Howling at bay for a small while longer then it might have without.

**XIII.**

Tim wears his meat suit much better than he does, Jason thinks. He does not know if this is because it was made for his Void-shape and Jason's meat was already here and waiting. That he was stuffed into something too small and ill fitting because it was all that would have him.

But Tim does not often seem to mind his meat shape and sometimes Jason thinks he might even like it. He languishes over sensations like the warmth of fire flickering over the pads of his fingers from Jason's lighter, and the curl of smoke around his heart when Jason exhales.

Tim takes cigarettes from between Jason's pursed lips and tells him they will kill him with a knife smile.

He then takes a slow-smoke drag and crushes the thing beneath his foot.

And Jason smiles back because it is a game and he is meant to.

If only it were so easy to feel the oscillation of the void thrum in his chest.

If only.

**XIV.**

It is not so terrible all the time. The edges of Jason fade and blur and tremble when he exhausts the shell that holds him. That is where he sometimes allows himself to float in the in between.

When Jason is fought or fucked out and lays lazy in the silence, he feels more acutely what is usually so far from his grasp.

He finds he prefers the warmth of the latter more often.

Tim is usually content to comply and on this at least they are of one mind and purpose.

But the bats, they are not always content to leave it be. To let it alone. They fret on the edges of Jason and Tim and sometimes they try and intervene.

"Doesn't it bother you even a little that you're basically Tim's abusive boyfriend?" Dick intones, as If the insult will spur Jason to mend his ways.

Jason offers a slow roll of his shoulders and a smirk like a hatchet, destroying everything it puts it's attentions to. "He doesn't cry over it if I am."

Dick splutters, flexing and unflexing finger stripes. "He's different. He hides that stuff from everyone. It doesn't mean he doesn't have feelings, Jason."

Jason hums assent. He too is rather sure that Tim has feelings sometimes. "He's agreeable to our arrangement." He offers instead.

Dick looks at him like Jason has spit Tim's crunched up bones at his feet. Incredulous and more than a little sick. Dick has certainly seen the bruises and bites and knife cuts.

But maybe he hasn't seen their mirror reflected in Jason's meat.

Perhaps it will calm his mind to know the arrangement is equal, Jason decides, and he lifts up the hem of his shirt to show the scrolling delicate deep cuts and scars that Tim has made for him.

Dick leaves in sickened silence, but Jason thinks it was well done to show him.

He thinks Dick won't ask these questions that do not matter anymore.

**XV.**

There is one thing that is Tim's and Jason leaves this one thing alone.

Tim's meat has become attached to various persons of interest. It's heart quickening with excitement or slowing with fondness when they are near. Though Tim is Jason's, in this way, these ones are Tim's.

Jason thinks Tim sees something shining in them like Jason sees in those that are his. The difference is that Tim is patient enough to wait for the natural order to peel their meat away.

Of the ones that are Tim's, the Superboy is by far the most noted and visited. Jason has seen them speak and when Tim is with the Superboy the Void is content to shimmer, nearly undetected deep within the secret of Tim's skin.

Tim laughs and smiles and jokes like a real boy. Tim's meat touches and caresses sun bronzed arms and his sharp fingers bracket a square jaw and corded neck.

The Superboy is Tim's and he enjoys him.

But always the Howling comes, and then Tim is _Jason's._

**XVI.**

They try and separate them once and only once.   
  
_Never_ again.

They think they will kill each other, and Jason supposes this is right. They will kill each other most probably.

But it is unbearable to be too small and too large at the same time. To struggle with Void and Lazarus madness and remember to be attentive to his meat and the meat of others.

Without Tim's clever blade to guide his screaming anguish, Jason is an avalanche of violence when the Howling comes.

They have convinced the Superboy to hold Tim fast and far away.

Jason razes Gotham to the ground.

It is one hundred and twenty dead and four blocks of smoking crumbled ashen concrete before Tim's shape is quick and lithe at his side, burying a blade between his ribs, eyes wide as meat and void collide and struggle behind them.

Jason slips down to his knees.

The thrum is loud and commanding in his chest.

He falls with the flurry of bird wings.

**XVII.**

Superboy has a scar. It tears through his top and bottom lip, stark and left justified.

**XVIII.**

The Bats are afraid to tell him something. Jason can tell by how they do not look at him and do not speak of matters concerning _the mission_ within his earshot.

Since the razing things have been quieter. It has been four months and Jason's meat has knitted itself together admirably. He is still watched, never not under careful scrutiny- but Jason feels today the topic is something other than his perpetual blood lust.

He soon finds out that evening when Dick is selected to break off from the group and approach him.

What Jason hears in between the paths Dick weaves through in language is that Tim is dying.

There is blood and no certainty of recuperation.

Jason asks to see him.

And Dick shudders lightly, discontent and looking at him strangely.

Only when he reaches up and touches his own face does Jason realize he is smiling.

**XIX.**

Jason thinks that he forgets too often that Tim is made of meat too. That Jason made this for him and stuffed the squirming tendrils of Tim down into it.

It is hard to forget now, while Tim is laid out open beneath him, Dick to the side breathing harshly through his nose.  
  
Dick is right that there is blood. There is much, and it is dark and shining and reminds Jason of a time when Tim and he first touched the edges of each other. Somewhere away from here.   
  
The smell is pure stinking hot copper and shit and Jason does his best to pretend it is not there.

When his eyes meet Tim’s, he sees the small sharp twin of his own smile on his face.  
  
When Tim tilts his head, Jason asks him if it is close.  
  
With deep satisfaction, Tim tells Jason what he hears.  
  
It is the wings of a thousand monarchs, taking to the sky.  
  
 **Epilogue**

Tim opens eyes he does not have and feels the Void welcoming him back. It is a violent mother and soothes and kills him a thousand times.  
  
Timothy feels himself shake apart. Every time the pieces of him collide back together.   
  
He is no longer slave to one event after another, and it is a relief to feel everything happening at once. Joys and sorrows and agony and ecstasy flashing through him and becoming him in turn.

He walks through time itself and matter twitches and forms and reforms itself around him.

He wonders why he is still here. What might be left undone.

It is a hundred years or ten seconds or a millennia before Timothy sees it, creeping around the edges of what he is.

Red tendrils curious and caressing, searching for fissures to squirm it’s way in. Timothy feels oscillation deep in bones gone missing.   
  
A returning thrum in answer.  
  
Blood in the water.  
  
Timothy smiles a sharp knife smile with the mouth he does not have.  
  
There is something left undone.  
  
He shapes _Jason_ in red lines.

He tempers him with Fury.

**Author's Note:**

> Well this was entirely self indulgent on my part. But here it is, a complete, enclosed story. Oh my! 
> 
> This story was born simply because I couldn't get any other current story working, so I wrote these snippets. 
> 
> I was tired of following rules is what it all boils down to. 
> 
> I think I'm better now.


End file.
